"Won't you sit over here? If you would prefer it, we can have more lamps. But they would spoil——" She indicated the vague stretch of country, across which mists were drifting like gray ghosts.
He drew up a chair at an angle to her own, so that he could study her. "You say you think you know why I've come?"
"I was expecting you," she said quietly. He could feel rather than see the steady kindness that was in her stone-gray eyes.
"If you were expecting me, then your sister must have——"
"My sister had nothing to do with my expecting. Can't you think of any one closer?"
He shook his head. At first he had hoped that Maisie had told her and done his work for him. Evidently it wasn't that. She was attributing some other motive to his visit. It was a motive the disclosure of which called for delicacy. She had prearranged his reception. It was no accident that had caused him to find her alone in the dimness of
the gathering evening. The scanty lighting of the shadowy room had been stage-set to spare them both embarrassment. "If it wasn't your sister——" He paused at a loss to know how to proceed further.
Her hands came together gently in her lap. When she spoke, her emotional voice had a new tenderness. "Will you allow me to help you? We're not such strangers as we seem. For years I've been interested in you. I was always hearing of your adventures in Mexico, Korea, the Balkans and last of all at the Front. You've been quite a romantic figure in my life. You've always seemed so strong; and I admire strength immensely. I never dreamt that a time would ever come when I would be able to help you. You're in love and she's not in love with you. You're older than she is and it makes you unhappy. She has time to experiment, but for you it's different; your love is bound up with the last of your youth. Because you've been unhappy, you've been unwise. Your foolishness ended yesterday with the return of Reggie Pollock. I received the news of his return this morning. So you came down here to me, which was perfectly natural."
He shifted his gaze and stared out of the window, puzzled and troubled. "Unfortunately for me, Lady Dawn, a good deal of what you've said is true. But I don't see how it makes it natural that I should have come to you. I've been wanting to come for a very long time, but was given to understand that what I had to say might be distasteful."
"You must put that out of your mind." She said it comfortingly, as though to a little boy. "There's